The D.C. Council may consider withdrawing millions of dollars in subsidies from stalled city real estate projects to publicly finance a convention center hotel.

D.C. Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi met with members of the D.C. Council on Monday and discussed the list of projects with $704 million in subsidies that have already been passed and could be diverted to the hotel. The list provided by the CFO's office includes the Southwest waterfront, the Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg residential development on the Capitol Riverfront, the mixed-use O Street Market in Shaw and seven other economic development incentives.

The two council members who oversee committees with direct oversight of the issue — Councilmen Jack Evans, D-Ward 2, and Kwame Brown, D-At large — have said using subsidies from stalled projects is a strategy they would consider to lower the amount of new spending required to issue $750 million in bonds to build the $550 million hotel. The recession has slowed many projects.

The Washington Convention Center Authority and the city’s hospitality industry have been pushing for a headquarters hotel since construction of the center started in the late 1990s. They argue a hotel is needed to draw large conventions to town. A 1,167-room Marriott Marquis is planned, but boosters have been unable to secure private financing to complete the deal.

D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray called the late Monday afternoon meeting in his office with Evans, Brown, Gandhi and Washington Convention Center Authority CEO Greg O’Dell. Evans and Brown have scheduled a June 24 joint hearing on the matter.

As they left the meeting, Evans and Brown said they are both committed to getting the long-stalled hotel built, but they are looking for ways to minimize the cost to the city, which is facing a nearly $1 billion 2011 budget gap.

Evans said other options being discussed include trying to attract bank loans by footing only a portion of the cost or seeking new development partners that could build the hotel more quickly or for a lower price. D.C. has already approved $187 million bond package that would fund about 25 percent of the hotel, but Quadrangle Development Corp. and Capstone Development have failed to attract an estimated $300 million in required debt financing.

“The option that I like least is the city financing the entire thing,” Evans said.

Gandhi said shortly after the meeting that there has not been discussion about usurping the city’s 12 percent debt cap, which it created last year in an effort to strengthen its standing on Wall Street and would prevent the city from issuing hundreds of millions of dollars of new bonds for the hotel. He said he is all for a new hotel but not if it means damaging the city’s financial position.

“We want to make it happen,” he said. “The question is how to make it happen.”

The subsidies total $704.15 million. Combining some portion of that with the $187 million already passed for the hotel could easily add up to the $750 million in bonds O’Dell says is needed for the hotel.